Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Zustand VS Backbone.js

Compare Zustand VS Backbone.js and see what are their differences

Zustand logo Zustand

Bear necessities for state management in React

Backbone.js logo Backbone.js

Give your JS App some Backbone with Models, Views, Collections, and Events
  • Zustand Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-12-19
  • Backbone.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30

Zustand features and specs

  • Simplicity
    Zustand offers a minimalistic and simple API, making it easy to integrate and use for state management in React applications without an extensive learning curve.
  • Performance
    Zustand is optimized for performance, ensuring that components only re-render when necessary, which can lead to more efficient applications compared to some other state management libraries.
  • No Boilerplate
    Unlike some other state management solutions, Zustand requires very little boilerplate code, allowing developers to focus more on building features rather than writing repetitive setup code.
  • React Concurrent Mode Support
    Zustand is designed to work well with React's Concurrent Mode, enhancing performance and usability in complex applications.
  • Ease of Integration
    Integration with existing projects is straightforward due to its small API surface and minimalistic approach, making it suitable for both small and large applications.

Possible disadvantages of Zustand

  • Limited Ecosystem
    Compared to more established state management libraries like Redux, Zustand's ecosystem is relatively small, which might limit available third-party tools and extensions.
  • Community Support
    Zustand has a smaller community compared to larger state management solutions, which could mean less community support and fewer resources such as tutorials and community-driven libraries.
  • Feature Set
    While Zustand is efficient for many use cases, it may lack some advanced features that other state management libraries provide, which could be necessary for specific applications.
  • Dependency on Modern React Features
    Zustand relies on modern React features such as hooks, which means it might not be suitable for projects that need to support older React versions.

Backbone.js features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Backbone.js is minimal and lightweight, which means it has a small footprint and adds very little overhead to your project.
  • Flexibility
    Backbone.js provides a flexible structure to developers by allowing them to build their own MVC or MVP architectures using models, views, collections, and routers.
  • Ease of Integration
    Backbone.js can be easily integrated with other libraries and frameworks, such as jQuery or underscore.js, enhancing its capabilities without much difficulty.
  • Large Community
    Backbone.js has been around for a long time, resulting in a large community and a plethora of plugins and extensions that can be leveraged.
  • Detailed Documentation
    The official site offers comprehensive documentation which includes tutorials, examples, and a detailed API reference, aiding developers to understand and utilize the library efficiently.

Possible disadvantages of Backbone.js

  • Steeper Learning Curve
    New developers might find Backbone.js difficult to learn due to its non-opinionated nature and lack of enforced structure.
  • Sparse In-Built Features
    Backbone.js provides only the basic building blocks, requiring developers to write more boilerplate code or rely on external libraries for additional functionalities.
  • Outdated
    As newer frameworks and libraries (like React, Vue, and Angular) have emerged with more robust features and better performance, Backbone.js has somewhat fallen out of favor in modern development practices.
  • Event Binding Complexity
    Managing event bindings in Backbone.js can become complex and sometimes messy in large applications, which can lead to difficult maintenance and debugging.
  • Limited Two-Way Data Binding
    Backbone.js does not provide two-way data binding out-of-the-box, unlike other frameworks such as Angular, necessitating additional code to sync views and models.

Zustand videos

Why I Moved from React Redux to Zustand and Why You Should Too!

More videos:

  • Review - Code Review: Zustand (small & fast state-management for React)
  • Review - Mastering Typescript State using Zustand

Backbone.js videos

Introduction to Backbone.js

More videos:

  • Review - Introduction to Backbone.js
  • Review - Backbone.js Code Review w Backbone.js Mentor Jonathon

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Zustand and Backbone.js)
Javascript UI Libraries
21 21%
79% 79
JavaScript Framework
0 0%
100% 100
Front-End Frameworks
100 100%
0% 0
JS Library
32 32%
68% 68

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Zustand and Backbone.js

Zustand Reviews

We have no reviews of Zustand yet.
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Backbone.js Reviews

20 Next.js Alternatives Worth Considering
A veteran on the scene, Backbone.js is all about giving structure to your JavaScript-heavy applications. It’s standing the test of time, enabling you to keep your data logic and display logic neatly side by side, all while being lightweight.
9 Best JavaScript Frameworks to Use in 2023
Backbone.js is based on the Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern. The library supports seven components: Models, Views, Collections, Routers, Events, Sync, and Options. Backbone.js also provides an asynchronous communication layer that allows the application to communicate with a backend service.
Source: ninetailed.io
JavaScript: What Are The Most Used Frameworks For This Language?
Backbone.JS is a lightweight JavaScript library that provides a framework for developing structured and scalable web applications. It offers a set of tools for building client-side applications that interact with RESTful APIs. Backbone.JS is well-suited for developing single-page applications (SPAs) where most of the user interface is rendered in the browser, rather than...
Source: www.bocasay.com
20 Best JavaScript Frameworks For 2023
Backbone.js is a JavaScript-based framework that connects to an API via a RESTful JSON interface. Backbone.js is known for being small and light because it only requires jQuery and one JavaScript library, Underscore.js, to use the entire library.
Top JavaScript Frameworks For Mobile App Development
Backbone JS is a JavaScript framework based on the MVP app design. As the name suggests, it acts as a strong backbone to your project. It is lightweight in nature and hence, is considered ideal for developing single-page applications. It offers a simplistic frontend and makes the best use of JavaScript functions.
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Backbone.js should be more popular than Zustand. It has been mentiond 17 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Zustand mentions (7)

  • React + AI Stack for 2025
    For client-side state, Zustand is the way to go. It's got zero boilerplate, a tiny bundle size, and a simple but powerful API that's easy to learn. You can create a store with just a few lines of code, which is pretty neat. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Lessons Learned: Overusing useMemo in React
    State Management with Zustand: Zustand offers a lightweight and intuitive approach to managing shared state, reducing the need for derived state or excessive memoization. It simplifies managing and updating global state without extra boilerplate. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Top 10 NPM Packages to Try for React (and Beyond) in 2024
    📦 Package: zustand Https://zustand-demo.pmnd.rs/ ⭐ Why You Should Try It: A small, fast, and flexible state management library that’s simpler than Redux. It works great with React. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Key Takeaways from My Recent Review of the React Docs
    Consider using the useReducer hook or a state management library like Redux or Zustand for complex state logic. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Revisiting Zustand and React with TS
    This is a simple example which I created to revise the working of Zustand with React and TypeScript with the help of the official Documentation of Zustand Zustand Official Docs. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
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Backbone.js mentions (17)

  • JavaScript Views, the Hard Way – A Pattern for Writing UI
    Https://backbonejs.org/#View There is also a github repo that has examples of MVC patterns adapted to the web platform. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • JavaScript evolution: From Lodash and Underscore to vanilla
    Underscore was created by Jeremy Ashkenas (the creator of Backbone.js) in 2009 to provide a set of utility functions that JavaScript lacked at the time. It was also created to work with Backbone.js, but it slowly became a favorite among developers who needed utility functions that they could just call and get stuff done with without having to worry about the inner implementations and browser compatibility. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • React is 10 years old
    Got it thanks for the context. I've read the web app and it seems to me it is just https://backbonejs.org/ re-written in Typescript and allows JSX. I'm very certain Typescript and JSX will have improved the DX for Backbone like apps, but it doesn't address all of the other issues that teams had with Backbone. e.g. Cyclical event propagation, state stored in the DOM (i.e. Appendchild is error prone in large code... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • Just Simply – Stop saying how simple things are in our docs
    Even further nowadays, docs are created using Docusaurus. I don't have problem with it but documentation should be good (eye) friendly than easy to write. Why not be creative while writing docs such as - Backbone.js - https://backbonejs.org Or https://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html as code annotation. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • The Emperor's New Library
    What we see, a decade ago, are that many of the "popular" libraries, frameworks, and methods, not surprisingly, have gone by the wayside, a lot that have remained in current code as difficult-to-removemodernize legacy cruft (Bower, Gulp, Grunt, Backbone, Angular 1, ...), and then we have the small minority that are still here. Some that remain have had their utility lessened/questioned by platform and language... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Zustand and Backbone.js, you can also consider the following products

RxJS - Reactive Extensions for Javascript

AngularJS - AngularJS lets you extend HTML vocabulary for your application. The resulting environment is extraordinarily expressive, readable, and quick to develop.

MobX - Simple, scalable state management

ExpressJS - Sinatra inspired web development framework for node.js -- insanely fast, flexible, and simple

Redux.js - Predictable state container for JavaScript apps

ember.js - A JavaScript framework for creating ambitious web apps